Privacy for bereaved?

jenny smith

A website listing people buried in graveyard has a link to the register of the local authority which gives the deceased's name/address cause of death etc. is this a breach of any privacy or other law. if it causes distress to the living can anything be done

Also can the family have the persons name and photo of grave removed from the site

L1011

Registers are public data accessible to all under the Civil Registrations legislation. You aren't going to get anything removed or censored there.

There's also nothing to force removal of photos but many of those sites will do so if asked and the stone is recent.

Online death registers are 50+ yesrs old though, so they probably won't remove photos of stones that old.

infogiver

jenny smith wrote: »

A website listing people buried in graveyard has a link to the register of the local authority which gives the deceased's name/address cause of death etc. is this a breach of any privacy or other law. if it causes distress to the living can anything be done

Also can the family have the persons name and photo of grave removed from the site

Name date of death, cause of death etc is all a matter of public record, all details of births marriages and deaths must be public.

ohnonotgmail

Notwithstanding the two previous replies which are correct what is the situation of the picture of the gravestone? Are graveyards considered private property? Are graves considered private property?

seamus

My understanding is that graves are private property in so far as they have private ownership, not that they include any entitlement to privacy.

Although the Gravestone may be privately owned, it is in a public place and publically viewable, so there is nothing preventing anyone from taking a photo of it. A little bit like someone taking a photo of the front of your house.

infogiver

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

Notwithstanding the two previous replies which are correct what is the situation of the picture of the gravestone? Are graveyards considered private property? Are graves considered private property?

As someone else said I'm sure if someone contacted the operator of the website and said that the family of the deceased were upset then I'm sure on a human level that the picture would be removed but graves and graveyards (unless you have a private graveyard on your private property) are fully accessible to the public.
I've looked into this myself because an elderly lady came to me upset in the aftermath of the death of her husband.
Her adult children from whom she is estranged were putting little momentos flowers etc. on the grave and she wanted to prohibit them from doing that (I know, I know...).
She'd already tried to stop them from attending the funeral.
Anyway the local authority say that they own the graveyard its public property and as long as no vandalism or other inappropriate behaviour is taking place then anyone can visit the graveyard and that's it.

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

infogiver

Fred Swanson wrote: »

What website is this?

I'm intrigued too. I'd imagine it's something to do with genealogy.